


Be Kind, Rewind

by SegaBarrett



Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin, The Baby-Sitters Club (TV 2020)
Genre: Gen, Grieving, Maternal Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:54:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25291231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Mary Anne looks back on the past.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 19





	Be Kind, Rewind

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own the BSC and I make no money from this.

Mary Anne is up in the attic when she finds them on a spindle – a set of DVDs, stacked one on top of the over, with titles written on them, meticulously, in green Sharpie: _Mary Anne turns 1, Mary Anne: Beginnings, Richard and Alma_. She allows her fingers to pull them up, one at a time, to peak at the words hidden beneath, reflecting into the disc’s rainbow configuration, their mirrors. 

She notices but eventually puts to the side DVDs labelled with titles declaring that Mary Anne has turned 2, 3, 4. That Mary Anne has turned 13.

She’s struck in the moment by the multitude of discs that will not include her mother in them. 

And so she plucks the first few from the spindle and walks to her room, placing them one by one into her laptop and ensuring that her door is closed. She wonders why she feels she must hide this from her father when he was the one who must have recorded and labeled each, but she cannot grasp the feeling, only is grasped by it.

As she clicks the icon, the screen fills with a tiny one year old in pigtails, a miniature Mary Anne dressed not so differently than she was a few months ago – overalls with kittens on them, a pink bow in her hair.

Alma – it feels weird to call her Mom – with her arms extended to ask Mary Anne to come towards her with her tiny shopping cart filled with little plastic oranges and grapes and nectarines. The girl on the screen turns back to look at the camera, to wave to her father.

Mary Anne is inexplicably furious with her, feeling as if the little girl is wasting time.

She skips ahead, then back, watching as the tiny Mary Anne sits in a chair and blows out a singular candle.

Watches as they go to the zoo. Watches Alma holding Mary Anne up and asking if she sees the elephants.

_Alma._

For she isn’t really sure that she knows this woman, or even knows this little girl. Maybe she hates the little girl, in a way. Not that it makes any sense – but is any of it supposed to make sense?

She presses stop and closes her laptop, laying back in her bed, putting her head on the pillow and pulling the covers around her closely. She wonders what Alma – what her mother – would say about who Mary Anne is now.

She tries to sketch her in, to see her standing at Richard’s shoulder and shaking her head as he tries to set down an impossible rule, always making him relent, saying, “Come on, Richard. You have to let her live a little. I’m sure she’ll be fine.” Or maybe she would double down – maybe she would say “I understand so and so might be doing it, but if everyone was jumping off a bridge, would you do it?”

She can’t gather either of those from the voice on the DVDs saying, “Mary Anne, say hi to your Daddy… Mary Anne. Aren’t you the prettiest?”

It’s strange how things can seem so far away in her own life. And they won’t get any closer.


End file.
